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Sex Ed with Aubrey Plaza

_Parks and Recreation'_s sarcastic intern kills it in a new sex comedy. But first she threatened to kill our writer

Aubrey Plaza is on her best behavior, or trying to be. "If I wasn’t shooting tomorrow, I’d drink a lot," she says, less than five minutes into our interview. "I’d burn it to the ground." Eventually, though, the night will turn weird. Aubrey Plaza is really good at being weird.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. It is a warm evening in early June, in an off-season ski-resort town in upstate New York, where Plaza is filming a movie. "It’s real bumblefucky up here!" she texted me, and the one-stoplight street is empty when I arrive. Then I see her bombing down a hill on a mountain bike.

It’s clear upon meeting Plaza that she is not the sarcastic, disaffected April Ludgate from Parks and Recreation, or the sarcastic, disaffected romantic interest in Funny People, or the sarcastic, disaffected hanger-on in _Scott Pilgrim vs. _the World, or the sarcastic, disaffected lead from the cute indie Safety Not Guaranteed. She laughs, occasionally. She’s more casually pretty than she’s ever allowed to look on-screen. She does not cower into her hoodie and blink slowly at every stupid thing that’s said to her. Even when I ask about her dream role.

"I want to be Catwoman," she says, over dinner at the only restaurant open on a Monday night. She lets the edge of her lip lift just the smallest amount, a hint of a smile. "I want my shot at Catwoman, and I want it soon."

In the meantime, she’s starring in The To Do List, in which she finally plays a character who doesn’t totally hate everything: Brandy, a valedictorian who spent all of high school focused solely on boning up for college and now decides to spend the summer boning up on her boning. It’s the kind of funny, raunchy coming-of-age comedy that will be seared into the minds of the teenagers who see it—_American Pie _or Superbad for kids born during the Clinton administration. The movie is set just after Clinton was elected, which brings Plaza to her favorite sex act among the many on display: "I liked angrily masturbating. I say my own name, which you kind of think could be hot in a way, but it doesn’t come off that way. I’m like, ’C’mon, Brandy. You got this, Brandy.’ But I have two hands up my vagina and I’m just staring, and I’m wearing a Hillary Clinton T-shirt."

That scene aside (we assume) Plaza’s portrayal of a Type-A student is a sort of homecoming role for her. "I was president of every club that I could be president of," she says. "Class president. Student council president, which is the ultimate." She played volleyball and softball; she still plays softball. But so far, the idea that Aubrey Plaza = April Ludgate has been hard to kick.

"I’m generally really interested in things and people," she says. "And I like things and people. I think literally April says that she doesn’t like things or people."

I point out that "liking things and people" is maybe the most noncommittal way to like anything.

"You’re right," she says. Her eyes flare. She does this when excited by the possibility of a witty exchange—flares her eyes the way some people flare their nostrils. She says "Yes, that’s right," instinctively, constantly, a quirk of her improv training in the Upright Citizens Brigade; she has a shoot-first-ask-later approach to comedy, and conversation, and life in general, which is why she keeps walking into trouble.

Yes, about that. Plaza has managed to torpedo nearly every public appearance she’s made within recent memory. On The Ellen DeGeneres Show, she came on stage doing such a strange, nearly invisible dance move—it seemed that she was rowing a tiny boat—that the host welcomed her with a reprimand: "That was such lack of commitment to dancing, if that’s what that was." On a morning news program, she wore fake teeth onto the set for no reason. Most famously, she walked onstage this spring while Will Ferrell was accepting an MTV Movie Award and attempted to take the statue out of his hands. It didn’t work. Then she sat down. It only seemed to reinforce the misconception that she is as awkward as any of her characters.

"I guess I think it’s better to go out there and do something interesting than to just do what everybody expects," she says now. "And that’s the kind of thing that gets picked up."

Dessert menus arrive, and despite a dairy allergy and a propensity for sugar highs, she orders something called a chocolate-mousse bombe. Pretty soon, she worries that she’s begun to spiral into that magnificently awkward place. ("Oh God, everything I said was wrong"). She kind of is. ("It exploded all over my insides," she says when the waitress collects what’s left of the mousse bombe. "If I die I’ll just sue you guys.")

"Tell her you’re staying here for the night," she says, "because a murderer kidnapped you." Her eyes flare. "What if you find out I’m not shooting a movie here? I’m going to follow you on my bike and kill you."

Outside, it’s getting dark, and cold, and I offer to give her a lift back to her rented house. Together, we manage to shove Plaza’s also-rented mountain bike into the trunk of my car. She suggests that perhaps she did not show up on a bike, wearing a helmet and a hoodie. "Aubrey Plaza arrived in a stretch limousine and a Zac Posen, um, shift dress," she says. "And an effortless... um...."

"She looked like she was born to wear high heels?" I suggest.

"Yes," she says. "That’s right."

When we arrive at her place, she invites me in to show me the knife that she’d kill me with. It’s sitting on the built-in bookshelf next to her bed. "This is it," she says. "I practice picking it up quickly." She perches on the bed and picks it up, twice, quickly.

It is not clear if she is fucking with me. But this is exactly the point. Aubrey Plaza isn’t awkward, not really: She’s operating on a subtle frequency between sincerity and artifice, between humoring an interviewer and trolling him, between pretending not to try and committing completely. Will Ferrell should have handed her that damn statue, and who knows what would have happened next.

So this is what a night with her is like: She makes the most of every opening. The next day I listen to my recording of our dinner. I start to skip a part where I walked away from the table. But then...

"Vagina," she says into the voice recorder. "Penis. Balls." She starts laughing to herself. "Old person’s penis. With a top hat on it. And a mustache. On the beach."